- Georgia teacher was arrested for threatening to kill a Muslim student
- How mainstream US media has played into the rise of Islamophobia
Benjamin Reese, a 51-year-old middle school teacher in the state of Georgia, US, was arrested last Friday after threatening the beheading of a Muslim student who simply disagreed with the presence of an Israeli flag in the teacher’s room. The threat was after the girl confronted the teacher in a hallway, telling him that she found the flag offensive ‘due to Israeli killings of Palestinians’. The teacher’s response was, “You motherf—king piece of s—t! I’ll kick your ass! I should cut your motherf—king head off!”. Upon the teachers arrest, authorities considered this to be a terrorist threat and considered it also to be ‘cruelty to children’.
After Reese’s arrest, the executive director of CAIR (Council of American-Islamic relations) Azka Mahmoud, said in a statement to CNN, “We welcome the swift action against Benjamin Reese including the charges and arrest in connection with the horrific threats he allegedly made to a child,”.
Warner Robins Middle School in Georgia, where the terror-related threat took place
How mainstream US media plays a role in the increase of anti-Muslim sentiment
From the cover-up of the war crimes committed by Israel since October 7, such as the use of white phosphorus in the early days of the massacre; to the perpetual one-sided interviews and videos of depicting Israeli suffering while overlooking the plight of the Palestinians; to the consistent misinformation and errors aimed at portraying Palestinians negatively, including the debunked allegation of baby beheadings; to the propagation of Israeli lies and attempted unbackable claims, it becomes evident that the incident that took place in Warner Robin Middle School was not just a blunder nor an isolated incident. Rather, it is a state-propagated behaviour that has either directly or indirectly led to an increase in islamophobia across the western world. According to CAIR (the largest Muslim advocacy group in the US), during the first months of the Israeli aggression alone, there were about 2,171 requests for help and reports of bias. These incidents include incidences of hate crimes and hate speech, as well as discriminatory behaviour in workplaces and “violations of an individual’s right to free speech and expression.”.
Although this is the recorded number of incidents in just the first month, it’s important to note that not all incidents are recorded or reported. This means that many other students in US schools may have had to go through a similar situation with a threatening teacher, not just Warner Robins Middle School. The crimes of the media are known and acknowledged by many, with complaints to media outlets reaching sky high after October 7. Yet the same routine continues with the same divisive propagators at work.
